survey
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9/02/2025
1. What's your name? How old are you? How would you describe yourself?
My name is Sam, and I’m in my early 30s. I’m a working class nomad, and adventurer. Without overthinking this response too much, I will add: angry feminist. lol
2. What was your upbringing like?
My childhood was transient, moving between the Mississippi Gulf Coast and St. Louis Metro East. Though I was tossed between the people who made me, it was my grandparents who truly raised me. I don’t remember much, but my fondest moments are playing outside (alone,) singing into my hairbrush (also alone,) and a couple beach vacations with Maw & Paw. Really tried not to trauma-dump here (that's for another page,) but I'm sure this still translates the general loneliness of it. I will say bonding with ecosystems, and places had a significant impact on me relationally, as well as identity
3. What are your hobbies? How do you like to spend your free time?
(Un)popular culture. Loads of media. Constant novelty, collecting, logging my experiences, travel planning, concerts, new foods. Sometimes I make things. During summer - spending my time in, and near water. Swimming, kayaking.
4. What kind of music do you like?
Yeah, mostly everything… Right now, specifically: Lo-fi synthwave for anxiety and mental waiting room tunes. Retro & 70s Soul for work. A variety of outlaw country, and Doom metal for driving, or whenever.
5. Favorite movies / TV shows?
Feels impossible to answer simply, but I’m a huge Horror fan, and “Peakie.” (Mostly in the Lynchian way, but also in the Blinders way too! lol) I will definitely be listing (exhaustively) as I continue to work on this site
6. Do you like any video games?
I game, and regularly watch a lot of Horror Let’s Plays. Not a gamer. I’m currently playing Project Zomboid, Stardew Valley, and Mini Motorways. Paused on Thimbleweed Park.
7. Favorite literature? This could be a novel, a book series, a comic, etc.
So I finally got over self-gatekeepy attitudes around this related to a maladaptive intellectualization thing, and pretentious book space. Then I matured a bit, and realized that I’ve been informational, and research reading for much of my life. I also love the symbolism, and metaphor of poetry, and screenwriting. This reminds me to finally make a list of works I’ve read though maybe
8. How has art affected your life?
Given it reminders of beauty, and a desire to meaning-make. I’m more of a thinker than an artist, and I crave constant muse.
9. What are your hopes for the future of humanity?
To continue to try.
10. Any hopes or aspirations for your own future?
Maintain healthier habits, love myself, use coping tools available when necessary. Keep seeing the world, as grounded as possible.
11. If sentient extraterrestrial life were to exist, what would you want to tell them about humanity?
That we could use some help. Please. lol
12. Do you currently have / have you had any pets or livestock?
In the early 2010s I had a couple of dogs, Sampson & Rainbow
13. How do you hope people remember you?
A ridiculous and weird shit, but a real one *Cardi B sound*
14. Do you have any advice for younger people?
Working with a mental health professional to help unpack upbringing, understand its impact, and choose one’s own path. Especially if one’s background doesn't align with their personal values. The pain of possible devastation is worth authenticity. Nothing’s “wrong” with anyone. (Until one can learn to cope with the fact that there might be lol) Everyone deserves help.
15. Are you religious?
*inhales* Both sides were Protestant Baptists. I attended VBS for folks to have free daycare, and church always gave me the heebie jeebies. I later had a weed-, and trauma- fueled new age, and occult era. I finally went to therapy, and realized I was in the lower end of an alt-right pipeline. Spoopy. My estranged parents are pretty bad into conspiracy theories, and MLMs. Even have some extended family with ties to old 70s cults. It’s brutal af, and I have a lot of half-baked writing about that I want to do something with one day
I’m an atheist and skeptic, but I’m still obsessed with the aesthetic and iconography of religion/cult/spirituality (which I think are all the same, just different flavors of high-control groups.) To me, it’s all mass delusion and psychosis. Thought distortions like magical thinking. This also applies to any supernatural, or pseudoscience belief whatsoever.
16. What do you think the meaning of life is?
To live it. Feel, and see all you can. Then choose, with intention daily.
17. Do you have any fears?
Never reconciling with my estranged siblings. People I hate becoming immortal. Losing touch with reality without help.
18. What makes you happy?
Cozy caves, emotional safety, the internet, snacks, games, wine, nature, sarcasm, justice
19. What kind of food do you like to eat?
Everything, but it depends on my brain, and body are feeling. Right now lots of rice and beans, bagels and cream cheese, pizza, chips, sushi
20. Do you have a favorite animal?
Any, and all really. Monkeys are up there tho
21. Do you have a favorite color?
Green, black, orange, brown.
22. What do you wish you had known earlier?
How to think in shades of grey. How to sit in uncertainty, or unknowing without making up fairy tales. That I’m a tough mf. That good, or okay things just happen sometimes and it’s out of my control lol
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survey taken from: emptygod.neocities.org/survey